(This post is written especially for those who grace this page from overseas. The nifty new counter widget lets OldSouth know you're out there, and that you check in from time to time. It's now late Friday afternoon in the UK, and OldSouth hopes a few of you read this tonight.)
Republican Brown appears to be pulling ahead of Democrat Coakley.
Who-woulda-thunk-it this time last year, or even in the days following the tearful farewell to Edward Kennedy? Massachusetts has been a virtual Kennedy fiefdom since the 1930's. The 'bluest' of the blue states. Even most of their Republicans are well to the left of the GOP in many ways.
Whether Brown wins or no, this is a real canary in the coal mine. The mood toward Obama and the Democrat Congress and Senate has turned very ugly.
Very. Ugly.
Official unemployment is at 10%. The true number is likely twice that, but hard to measure. But people intuitively know, anecdotally, as they watch what is happening to their neighbors and friends.
They have seen Obama and company cooperate with Wall Street in the crushing of Main Street, and a very large proportion of the nation lives in small towns and small cities.
Americans are outgoing and loquacious. They know and talk to their neighbors, their relatives, their business acquaintances, their friends at church and the civic club and the local high school basketball game. They may move around a bit in this large country, but they maintain long friendships.
They are generous to a fault. The flood of cash, supplies and people headed toward Haiti is so large that air traffic control had to send planes back to Florida yesterday, without landing in Port-au-Prince, for lack of room on the tarmac. The entire volunteer fire department of Bedford-Stuyvesant was packing up to head to Haiti, not exactly sure how they would get there, but packing nonetheless.
It's that kind of country, out here away from Wall Street and Washington.
Contrast this with the raw cynicism of the Hope-and-Change Gang, and their allies on Wall Street, and do not be shocked at what may yet transpire here.
Keep us in your prayers, in the meantime.
2 comments:
Even most of their Republicans are well to the left of the GOP in many ways...
Being older than dirt, I remember when Massachusetts had a Republican Senator: Edward W. Brooke III (iirc).
Senator Brooke was also a black man in a bigoted state. Amazing, really, but I was too young to know that then.
Senator Brooke would fit in well with the statists of today. He loved big government and big government programs. He was a Republican for the same reason that most black people were Republicans then: the Dems had a long ugly history of active racism against black folk. They weren't safe.
The underclass which the Dems cynically created in order to take over, has no sense of their ancestors' darkly heroic political history.
Fortunately, whilst most of them are Dem supporters and enthusiasts, few of them bother to vote. They don't realize what a sign of disrespect this is to those who fought so hard to make a place in the world for them.
Of course these same forefathers would use a willow branch on any number of lazy behinds if they could but see their descendants now.
But Edward Brooke in Massachusetts? He knew the cruelty of the white man in his state and he thought national intervention the only cure.
Haven't gotten around to writing about this race on my blog. The European readers don't care, and the Americans are waiting for the mid-terms. A post on Edward Brooke might be informative, though...and fun for me to revisit those times.
I remember Brooke vaguely from my youth, but not much about him.
The Republican Party was birthed by the opposition to slavery in the late 1850's, if memory serves. They covered themselves with shame after the War Between the States. But then again, both parties have managed to do that over the years...
Another subject worth exploring is the huge role that Andrew Jackson played in the development of the Democratic Party. A most complex character in history, with many pros and cons. He is remembered, amongst other things, for his forced migration of the Cherokee nation to Oklahoma. Not a pretty episode in our history.
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